Television and Media - Effect of TV In The Age of Missing Information

The Effect of Television In The Age of Missing Information

Bill McKibben, in his book The Age of Missing Information, explores the impact

of television on modern cultures both in America and around the world. In the

book McKibben carries out an experiment; he watches the entire television

broadcast of 93 separate cable channels for one entire day. In all McKibben

viewed 24 hours of programming from 93 separate cable stations, that is more

than 2,200 hours of television. His purpose in this formidable undertaking was

to determine how much actual information that was relevant to real life he could

glean from a day of television broadcasting. McKibben also spent a day camping

alone on a mountain near his home. Throughout the book, McKibben compares the

two experiences, contrasting the amount of useful information he received from

nature, as opposed to the amount of useless, hollow information the television

provided. He goes on in the book to make several very important observations

about how the television has fundamentally changed our culture and lifestyle,

from the local to the global level.

Locally, McKibben argues, television has a detrimental effect on communities.

The average American television is turned on for eight hours every day. For a

third of the day, every American household is literally brainwashed; bombarded

with high-impact, low content images which mold the mind of the viewer into

whatever the broadcaster wishes.

The problem with television at a local level is that it replaces the innate

human desire for contact with other humans in a community. Instead of relying on

friends, families and community for the day-to-day stability needed to carry on

a normal life, American's switch on the television. CNN, the Discovery Channel,

Oprah, and Friends, all replace an actual community with a virtual one which in

some ways is better than an actual community. In the seductive world of

television, someone is always there at 6:00 relating the news. When people begin

to rely on the television for the news, weather, entertainment, and

companionship, they begin to become less interested in what is going on around

them in their community. Take and example which McKibben cites in his book. In

the early 1900's people were extremely interested in politics. The American

democracy was in full swing and as literacy and education climbed, so did the

turnouts at the poles. But ever since the induction of the television into